CASE STUDY - Valley Bank

Valley National Bank, a regional bank with approximately $31 billion in assets, operates more than 215 branches across New Jersey, New York, Florida and Alabama. The bank, through its experienced and knowledgeable team, is committed to providing the most convenient service and the latest innovations to meet and exceed customer expectations.

With this commitment in mind, Valley recently reevaluated its process for wire transactions in an effort to make transfers more secure and efficient. Valley traditionally used “call-backs” to verify faxed wire instructions above a certain dollar amount or to a new beneficiary – a common industry practice. Whenever there was a higher risk transaction, Valley’s customer service representatives would routinely call the customer to verbally confirm that the instructions received were accurate and authorized.

Over time, Valley recognized three major drawbacks to the callback process:

1. The confirmation call-back was inconvenient to the customer, often interrupting them in the course of their day, resulting in a negative experience. When customers couldn’t be reached, wires were delayed, sometimes creating repercussions.

2. Valuable time of wire services representatives – which might otherwise have been spent supporting other business services – was spent managing and validating transactions that should have been quick and easy.

3. Both the original fax instruction and confirming phone call used insecure channels, making the wire transactions vulnerable to interception and fraud.

The Solution

Valley selected Authoriti’s Permission Code™ technology to simplify and secure faxed wire transfer requests. The Authoriti platform flips the model and puts control of transactions in the hands of Valley’s customers. With a few clicks, customers generate a Permission Code “smart-PIN” from the “Valley Authorizer”-branded app on their smartphones.

The code provides the customer’s encrypted and digitally signed instruction for a specific transaction, including payment account, beneficiary details, and amount. This gives Valley the confidence that the instruction was generated by the customer and that the transaction was authorized.

The Permission Code resolved all three drawbacks of the process by improving client experience, making operations more efficient, and decreasing the risk of fraud:

1. With Permission Codes, there are no phone calls. Customers benefit from the ease with which they can securely authorize their wire transfers at the moment they send the request – without the delays and interruptions of confirmation call-backs.

2. Because Permission Codes securely provide evidence of customer authorizations and the specifics of the transaction – who, what, when and where – Valley’s wire service representatives can focus on executing transactions, with the confidence that they are authorized by the customer.

3. Permission Codes are secure and can’t be repurposed or imitated. A digital signature ensures that no aspect of the transaction has been modified from the time it was generated to the time it was validated, driving down fraud. Even if a bad actor was to somehow obtain a Permission Code, the code is only valid for the original transaction that the customer specified.

“We are excited to be among the early adopters of this revolutionary approach to authorization by our customers,” said Fabian Rojas, Valley’s CTO. “The safe, secure and resilient Permission Code platform will protect our customers by putting them in control of their own transactions, significantly reducing the potential for identity theft and fraud, while streamlining our internal processes. Everybody wins.”

The Value Proposition

In the course of resolving the three negative outcomes, Authoriti enabled Valley to streamline its operations. By eliminating the cost of the call-back resource, Valley is realizing value from increased operational efficiency and cost savings.

Additionally, Valley benefited from the speed of implementation of the Authoriti platform. After the decision was made to adopt the Authoriti solution, the Valley-branded app was configured to Valley’s specific transaction types and user accounts – and made available in the App Store – in just six weeks.

Next Steps

Valley and Authoriti are currently collaborating to expand the footprint of the Permission Code technology into other use cases. At Valley, the days of chasing and bothering customers with confirmation calls are over. Welcome to a world based on client authorization.